05/07/2016

Will social justice warrior CEOs attract the attention of the plaintiff's bar?

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal featured a front page article about an apparently increasing number of CEOs of public companies who use their companies’ resources, and wield their companies’ resources as a sword, to advocate in their official corporate capacities to advance their favorite social agendas–or to oppose legislation on social policies that they disfavor. ...

If a stockholder thought that a CEO of a public company was more focused on social activism than observing his or her duty to maintain a focus on maximizing shareholder wealth, one element of a claim would be the measure of damages. If a company is profitable “enough”, the CEO may “get a pass”. But the recent downward trajectory of the stock price of profitable companies like Apple, which recently lost about $73 billion in market value, and an unrelated petition of over one million people who are boycotting Target department stores due to their position on recent gender issues, may gain the attention of a different type of activist: plaintiffs’ lawyers who specialize in stockholder class actions.

The twist, of course, is that many trial lawyers are themselves social justice warriors.